The inaugural annual ‘Khoemacau Culture Day,” aimed at celebrating cultural diversity of all the company’s employees and contractors, held over the weekend has been hailed a success.
The event was hosted this past weekend at the company’s Tudika Village and Zone 5 respectively. Participants were treated to fun-filled day with speakers from Tanzania, South Africa, Ghana and Australia among others who gave a history of their cultures as compared to what they experience in Botswana.
Among other activities which were held included sack race and tag of war games and an award ceremony later that day, in the evening, participants were treated to performance by local prominent traditional group, Culture Spears.
The ‘kulenyane’ hit-makers did not disappoint but put more thrill to the fun-filled day, giving attendees the taste of their music- that of way back to their recent releases. Multitude couldn’t help control their delight but danced the night away.
Cultural cuisine was the taste of the whole day and many people from different countries who works at the mine enjoyed the delicious tswana chicken, seswaa, mogodu, water melon, thako and serobe which were deliciously prepared at the kgotla.
The event organizer, who is also Khoemacau’s Vice president – Human Resource and Communication Department, Mmama Mhlanga-Fichani explained that the culture day equally demonstrates the commitment by the company to encourage a culturally diverse workplace.
She further noted that the event’s activities were in line with one of their people objectives – to promote a high-performance value driven organisation. She added that among other deliverables under this objective is to improve and promote staff engagement and commitment so as to drive productivity and deliver on business expectations.
“As a result the culture day is also intended to promote team bonding between our Khoemacau teams, employees and our partners,” she noted.
Fichani stressed that the event will also focus on serious and fun activities with an objective to help their employees, teams and their partners to understand and appreciate different groups of people within their working environment to encouraging collaboration and teamwork.
She further indicated that the importance of a culture day helps them see each other in a different light, allow people to connect in different settings as well as help them relax in a different atmosphere.
“It is important to note that the culture day is not a once off event and will be repeated at spaced intervals and the intention is to have people that did not manage to attend due to work commitments to participate in future culture days,” she said.
For his part, Khoemacau Copper Mining Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Johan Ferreira revealed that they have approved the culture day to be celebrated in order to celebrate their diversity and bring together different cultures, background and religious believes.
He further indicated that diversity is what makes them all unique, in their status, race and life experience. He stressed that all this makes them who they are and therefore it is important for each and everyone in the company to understand each other in the environment that they work in.
